A New History of Eastern Christians

In his column, former Federal Councilor Pascal Couchepin shares a book that left a lasting impression on him. This month, it’s an essay by Joseph Yacoub on the little-known history of Eastern Christians.

Occasionally, amid reports of the major conflicts tearing the Middle East apart, mention is made of the often tragic plight of Christian communities that have lived there since time immemorial. Reference is made to the conditions under which these churches are struggling to survive. In fact, hundreds of thousands of Eastern Christians are emigrating. They are leaving Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and to a lesser extent Egypt, to settle in the United States, Brazil, France, Sweden…

Before these waves of emigration—which the leaders of these communities have struggled to stem—they had experienced periods of peaceful coexistence or mass killings. The Assyrian-Chaldeans were massacred in 1915, shortly before the genocide of the Armenian people.

Should we simply dismiss these «remnants» from the early days of Christianity? Of course not! That would be an insult to their suffering, but it would also deprive us of their reflections, their writings, and the insights from their debates—all of which help us understand the formative period of our own culture.

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Joseph Yacoub, the author of this essay, is a university professor, a specialist in Assyrian-Chaldean studies, and a staunch defender of this Christian minority. Reading his book, which is brimming with quotations and references to numerous poets, theologians, and political activists, is somewhat dizzying. Is it even possible to do justice, in just a few hundred pages, to a history that encompasses so many different peoples, living in regions that extend far beyond the current Middle East? It seems to me that he has succeeded, a fact confirmed by the choice of a publisher known for its expertise in these fields.

The role of the Nestorians in the spread of Christianity is often overlooked. Even earlier, the apostle Thomas is said to have been active in southern India—present-day Kerala—founding a community that still counts millions of followers today. Yacoub discusses the difficulties faced by these early Christians with the Jesuit missionaries in the 16th^th century, determined to bring them under the authority of the Latin Church.

The Nestorians, for their part, had made their way into China and Tibet. In China, a stele dating from 781 was discovered that mentions the founding of a monastery in 638. The author of the inscription on this stele was a learned monk who translated works from Syriac into Chinese. This priest was fluent in Chinese, Uyghur, and Sogdian. He was knowledgeable about Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. In 786, he learned Sanskrit and translated the Buddha’s sutras. The Xi’an stele, the only one of its kind, also uses expressions adapted to Chinese culture to explain Christian doctrines such as the Trinity.

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In the Near East, the influence of Byzantium—which survived for a thousand years after the fall of the Western Roman Empire—was often decisive, for better or for worse. How can one explain Egypt’s rapid fall to the Arabs, if not by mentioning the latent animosity of the country’s inhabitants toward Byzantium—toward its dogmatic intolerance, but perhaps even more so, toward its fiscal greed!

Eastern Christians played an important role in the wave of Orientalism in the 16th century^th century. Throughout history, both before and after the Crusades, pilgrims made the journey to Jerusalem. In the 19th^th In the 19th century, Lamartine, Nerval, and others visited the holy sites. Let us not forget the great Renan, who contributed to a better understanding of the Eastern roots of our culture, even though Ernest Renan is still viewed with suspicion in certain circles.

What remains after reading this book? A great deal of respect for Yacoub’s erudition, but above all a sense of humility in the face of our near-total ignorance of the history of our Eastern cousins and their ancestors.

Pascal Couchepin, a former federal councillor, shares a monthly reading that has made a lasting impression on him. To his previous columns.

Joseph Yacoub
A New History of Eastern Christians
Perrin
March 2026
400 pages

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